Byzantine culture

“ LOMBARDIC, ANGLO-SAXON, CARLOVINGIAN
AND GERMAN IVORIES
I. Lombard Ivory Carvings
We have seen how Constantinople, or the “New Rome,” became the centre of the new Christian World as Alexandria had been of the Hellenistic; and for many centuries the riches and splendour of this most luxurious city shone out on the barbarian nations, as a lodestar for their imagination and a pattern for all civilization and culture. Byzantine, being an intrusive art in these countries, did not entirely crush out native effort, but modified the design and vastly improved the technique. ”

“ Byzantium might be in decadence, her provinces falling away, her glory wasting; the follies of the court and emperors, the best manhood of the empire lost in cloisters and hermitages, the preference of the nobility for intrigue and diplomacy might be all working their deplorable results—nay, the results might be at hand! Still the passion of the people for fetes and holidays remained. Tastes are things of heredity. In nothing is a Byzantine of this day so nearly a classic Greek as in his delicacy and appreciation where permitted to indulge in the beautiful. ”

“ Is is admitted that Byzantine society created none of the elements which form this rich and brilliant synthesis of art. Nothing is owed to new inspirations; no particular note of a new race is struck; there is no influence of a special milieu, no discovery due to the existence of an artist of genius, all we can trace in the development of Byzantine civilization being the presence of able writers and perfect technicians, all seeking to give greater proportions to borrowed models. Roman, Greek and Oriental art united to give that interesting blend: the Byzantine. ”

“ Alike from any such complete change, complete degeneracy, or ultimate attainment of life and perfection, the genuine Greek style of the Byzantine empire was exempted. That Oriental splendour of gold and colour by which so early as the days of Justinian the Great, it sought to gloss over the feebleness of its reminiscences of classical beauty, remained the unchanged leading characteristic of its illuminations down to the final extinction of the empire in 1453. ”

“ The manner of building and painting, the tradition of jewellery, metal work and decoration that we call Byzantine, are so closely connected with the history and liturgy of the Orthodox Eastern Church, that we ought not to pass them over here without some notice. The Byzantine question is one of those that are most disputed by archaeologists. When the Romans had come under the influence of Greece, they, or their Greek artists, covered the Empire with the buildings and statues that we call Roman-Greek. ”

“ All but twelve of their forty-eight grand viziers were either Byzantines or from former Byzantine provinces such as Albania, Dalmatia, or Greece.
Byzantine civilization affected much more of daily life than merely ceremonies and government, however. It entered into every phase of life. It was the Byzantines who invented the fork. From Constantinople it was taken to Italy, and medieval English tourists brought it back to Britain. But for a long time a man was considered sissy and affected if he used one instead of his fingers. ”

“ Although I have said that the workers of this school were breaking away from the Byzantine tradition and looking at life with their own eyes, yet it is never possible for men suddenly to produce work wholly independent of tradition, even when they are foolish enough to try; so we find in this case Greek art, through Byzantine, retains enough influence with these men to give to their work a dignity and restraint which is lacking in that of the thirteenth century. ”

“ Byzantine art is not only wonderful itself, but it shows how the Byzantines helped themselves to everything good that had been done before them. On the walls of a famous tomb in Ravenna, there is a mosaic of two doves at a drinking fountain that might have come from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. There is also Byzantine art that bubbles over with Greek love of life. Some of it is filled with early Christian saints and symbols, like the peacock and the fish. There is some with the lions and eagles of the ancient Hittites, and others whose fierce, bearded saints are like Assyrian warriors. ”

“ In the Byzantine literature, there are works which claim no originality, but have a higher value than their contemporaries, because they give extracts or fragments of the lost writings of the best days of Greece. Next in value follow the lexicographers, the grammarians, and commentators. The most voluminous department, however, of Byzantine literature, was that of the historians, annalists, chroniclers, biographers, and antiquarians, whose works form a continuous series of Byzantine annals from the time of Constantine the Great to the taking of the capital by the Turks. ”

“ The more ancient a nation is, the more liable is it to be overwhelmed by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire, during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence, did not produce one work of original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ We have an exaggerated idea of the rigidity of Byzantine art owing to the numerous repetitions by inferior craftsmen which are found in our museums, and by confusing the Golden Age, with the period of real deadness which commenced in the twelfth century, and has lasted to this very day in the art of the Greek Church. ”

“ Western Europe, Asia Minor, Persia and Egypt all contributed elements both of design and of technical skill, which combined to create the new and for a while vigorously flourishing school of Byzantine art. The dull lifeless forms of Roman art in its extreme degradation were again quickened into new life and beauty in the hands of these Byzantine craftsmen, who became as it were the heirs and inheritors of the art and the technique of all the chief countries of antiquity. ”

“ Thus, by the enthusiasm of faith, was called into existence that really primitive School of Painting which has received the name of Byzantine; because at the very time when it obtained the liberty of displaying itself, Constantine, transferring the seat of empire to Byzantium, necessarily took with him the body of artists of whom he was the protector; because, too, as we have before observed, Byzantium henceforth became for many centuries the sole focus whence light radiated towards the West, which was now plunged in barbarism. ”

“ Having glanced at the beginnings of Christian art, we must not linger over the history of Byzantine. Eastern traders and artisans, pushing into Western Europe from the Adriatic and along the valley of the Rhone, carried with them the ferment. ”

“ Continuing in existence throughout the later middle ages, it is hardly yet extinct in the lands of the Greek Church. It had enormous influence over the art of Europe and the East during the early middle ages, not only through the distribution of minor works from Constantinople but by the reputation of its architecture and painting. Several buildings in Italy are truly Byzantine. It is difficult to set a time for the origin of the style. When Constantine founded new Rome the art was still classical, although it had even then gathered up many of the elements which were to transform its aspect. ”

“ How Byzantine art was carried to the furthest corners of the Christian world it is not difficult to see. Constantinople had become the centre of the Roman Empire. From her shores there poured forth warriors, traders, missionaries to every part of the earth.
Byzantine architecture borrowed her massive cupolas, supported by square pillars over a square edifice, from Persia, and from Syria she borrowed her floral ornamentation; while her love of colour, of brasses and mosaics, is traceable to the influence of all the Oriental centres where wealth and ostentation abounded. ”

“ The term Byzantine as applied to art is commonly used to denote the style which was developed in the Eastern empire soon after Constantine had transferred the seat of government from Old to "New Rome," or Constantinople as it was also called instead of Byzantium, which was the ancient name. ”

“ As was well said by Gibbon, the mental paralysis of the Byzantines was "the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state." [368] The one civilisation from which Byzantium might latterly have profited—the Saracen—was made tabu by creed, which was further the efficient cause of the sunderance of Byzantine and Italian life. ”

“ We have numerous tirades against the manners of Constantinople preserved in Byzantine literature, and may judge from them something of the faults of the time. It would seem that there was much of the sort of luxury to which ascetic preachers take exception—much splendour of raiment, much ostentatious display of plate and furniture, of horses and chariots. Luxury and evil living often go together, but when we examine all the enormities laid to the charge of the Byzantines, there is less alleged than we might expect. ”

“ Science, which demands before all things the free action of an untroubled mind, suffered a complete eclipse throughout this phase of intolerance.
War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind constituted Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it was romantic; it had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium and Persia were not fighting the barbarians from the north, they wasted Asia Minor and Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. Even in close alliance these two empires would have found it a hard task to turn back the barbarians and recover their prosperity. ”

“ They think it better to be Byzantine than Roman; but they think it atrocious to be a schismatic. It would be a great pity if what is left of so ancient a tradition as the Byzantine rite in Italy were ever to disappear. The Roman rite, extended over vast continents in unquestioned predominance, cannot fear the rivalry of this little remnant; no Latin could possibly be jealous of any other rite. May the Byzantine rite remain ever in this ancient home, and may it flourish always as the memory of so great a past. ”

“ All art produced within the theoretical boundaries of the Empire, as far West as the Adriatic and East to the Danube, is Byzantine. Nothwithstanding occidental elements to be traced in such Serbian monasteries as Studenitza, with its carved frescoes after Italo-Dalmatian models, the Byzantine is ubiquitous: the money and the patronage alone belongs to the new States. ”

“ Another thing the Byzantines did was to insist on education. Even the mighty French emperor Charlemagne had a hard time if he wanted to spell his way through a book and sign his name. Most Byzantine emperors could not only read and write but were thoroughly educated. Theophilus studied everything from Greek to natural history. Leo the Philosopher composed poems, sermons, and a life of his father. Constantine Born-in-the-Purple was famous for his books on the barbarians and on his empire. ”

“ The traditional Greek and Roman arts were now assimilated with the arts of Persia and Syria, but moulded and influenced by the new religion, giving the strong personal vitality, deep significance and symbolism which was so remarkable throughout the Byzantine period. ”

“ The Byzantines preserved classic culture. They preserved Greek literature, Greek science, Greek learning, and even the Greek language. And this at a time when almost everybody in the West had completely forgotten Greek, and as a matter of fact, only churchmen and a handful of ragged scholars even knew Latin.
This was a very important contribution. No civilization ever starts from scratch, and our modern one is based on the renewed interest in classic culture that is called the Revival of Learning. ”

“ Even before there had been riots with the “democracy in rags,” the poor people, joining the monks and abbots to make certain that the old-time religion of the Byzantines was kept true and pure even if this made the empire fall.
Nevertheless the old-time Orthodox Byzantine faith did not come into being just as it was and all at once. Since religion was so important, and since the Greeks loved to argue, the whole history of the Byzantines is filled with violent discussions and bitter differences of opinion about exactly what a man was supposed to believe. ”

“ We have had a glimpse of the luxury with which the Empress Eudoxia surrounded herself in her palace on the Bosporus, and our curiosity and interest may be satisfied concerning the domestic surroundings of a woman of rank during the period of the Byzantine decadence. The only truly original Christian art, down to the eleventh century, was the Byzantine; it dominated both Christian and pagan artists. ”

“ Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins. 93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine historian. ”

“ Sicily, southern Italy, Rome, Ravenna, and Venice contain many examples of Byzantine churches. Italian painting in the Middle Ages seems to have been derived directly from the mosaic pictures of the artists of Constantinople. Russia received not only its religion but also its art from Constantinople. The great Russian churches of Moscow and Petrograd follow Byzantine models. Even the Arabs, in spite of their hostility to Christianity, borrowed Byzantine artists and profited by their services. ”